“Primarily it was material class interest that counted in the religious wars of the 16th century. Those wars were class-struggles, just like the clashes in England and France later on.  It is irrelevant that these struggles took religious forms and the interests, needs and demands of various social classes appeared in the guise of religion. This does not make any difference, and the characteristics of the age provide the obvious explanation for that. (…)

The Middle Ages was rooted in rough soil.  Ancient civilization, ancient philosophy, politics and legality, were all abandoned and everything was started again from the very beginning.  The only thing adopted from ancient times was Christianity. (…) Consequently the priests were able to monopolise scholarship and hence all ensuing development took on essentially theological features. 

The dogmas of the Church formed the cornerstones of politics and quotations from the Bible served as legal sources in trials.  The Church embodied and canonized the existing feudal order.

Therefore it is quite obvious that all forms of revolt and attack against feudalism had to focus on the Church, and all revolutionary social and political ideas had to emerge primarily and overwhelmingly as religious heresy.  Before the existing order could be questioned, its’ glory and sanctity had to be destroyed.”

 
“The German Peasant War pointed prophetically to future class struggles, by bringing on to the stage not only the peasants – that was no longer anything new – but behind them the beginnings of the modern proletariat with the red flag in their hands and the demand for common ownership in their lips.”